I’m still playing Twilight Princess even though I haven’t blogged about it for almost a month. I’ve intended to but haven’t gotten around to it and rather then spend time blogging about playing, up until now I’ve chosen to play it instead.

Once more, this is a game that I think is better the less you know about it so if you haven’t played it and think that you sometime, maybe, possibly, will, stop reading.

So I’ve kept playing and I’ve finished the first two dungeons and I’m getting ready to head for the third one. As far as I can tell I’ve expelled all twilight from Hyrule, so I don’t think I’ll play as a wolf anymore. So far the game is really great. It’s one of my favorite Zelda game, maybe my absolute favorite. I like the darkness and despair about it. It’s gotten me a lot more emotionally invested in the game than I usually are in a Zelda game. The only other time that I’ve actually cared this much about the characters in the game has been Majora’s Mask, hence my idea for the perfect three days, inspired by Groundhog Day.

I like that I know so little, that everything that happens catches me by surprise and that I have very little idea of how far I’ve actually made it into the game. From what the game tells me, this third dungeon will be the last one but based on previous games I might just as well be less than half-way through at this point.

The combats are really intense, both as a wolf and as a human/hylian. Most of the combats feel very intense and the wiimote control scheme makes them feel a bit more real than in other games. You could argue, as somedo, that modern Zelda game has lost some of the free world exploration that was such a big part of the first game and if you look at it that way, Twilight Princess is very low on free exploration. There are obstacles spread out all over that makes your path through both the overworld and various underworlds vary linear. However, this does not take away anything from my excitement of playing it. Sure it would be nice to be more free to explore, but I still feel like I’m making the decisions, so I’m happy.

The game also keeps me on the edge of my seat because I feel like I really, really don’t want to die in it and it feels very possible that I might in encounters every now and then. I don’t know if I missed something or if it’s by design, but so far I haven’t manage to find any fairy to keep in a bottle, so I don’t have the usual ”insurance” that I tend to have in Zelda games.

And one more thing, the Shadow Beasts are really creepy! Really, really creepy.

If there’s anything negative to say about the game it’s the fact that some puzzles are hard in a way that doesn’t feel fair. Today I needed to google something for the first time in it. I had no idea about how to taw the Zora’s. (Here’s what I found online. It felt like a failure but I had tried and tried and pondered the puzzle over and over again and when I read the solution I was glad that I did google it. There’s no way I could have figured that out on my own, unless I’ve replayed the game from start and kept playing at a more regular pace. As things are now I’m playing once a week, tops. That means I forget things like a burning lava rock next to a warp portal.

And I’m also very confused by where I’m allowed to start if I’m saving and quitting, so that means I tend to not play if I don’t know that I can put at least two hours into the game.

Last week I started playing Zelda – Twilight Princess. I’ve had the game for quite a while, over two years I think, but haven’t really felt like I had the time to get deep into it until now. When I started playing last week I saw that the only save file I’ve used was last modified on New Year’s Eve 2014, so it’s been a while. 🙂

I really didn’t have much idea about what the game would be, other than that it was a Zelda game. The playing I had done two years ago had taught me how to move around using the Wii controller and given me a taste of the look of the game but nothing more. When I got further and further into it during the weekend I got really hooked. It was a much darker game then I expected, more like Majora’s Mask then any other Zelda game I’ve played.

There’s a lingering feeling of despair all over the world and the ”twilight realm” that’s spreading across the world is really scary.

That being said, if you haven’t played this game and think that you might do it one day, then do it! Stop reading right now. The less you know about the game the better.

Now that the ”spoiler horn” have been officially fired, let’s talk som specifics. As the game started I really thought that it would be similar to the beginnings of Ocarina of Time. I was told that I was going to go to Hyrule Castle and possible see the princess. The sun was shining and things seemed fine. Yes, a kid got missing and I had to rescue it but the monsters I had to fight to do that were not that bad and I felt like I had things under control. The I got pulled into the Twilight Realm and man is it creepy.

I had heard before that Link could morph into a wolf in this game, so I wasn’t that surprised when I first transformed but I had not expected the alternate world of twilight that I was supposed to navigate. Nor had I known that I didn’t control the metamorphose myself.

And the monsters… The monsters of the twilight actually freaked me out. Not just in a ”they are hard to beat” kind of way but in a, holy shit this is nightmare inducing kind of way. Some of them reminded me of the demogorgon from Stranger Things.

Thing is/was a bit rambly but I just wanted to jot down how much I love this game now, as I’m about eight hours into it. I feel an urge to keep playing, even more so than usual with Zelda games. Right now I’m more fueled by the need to save the children of my village then to save the world of something similar.

Last night, right before I stopped playing, I found the wooden sword that one of the kids had used. It was stuck in the ground in a twilight covered part of Hyrule and at that point I really didn’t want to stop. I wanted to keep playing all night long but that just isn’t feasible right now.